You Can't Hold On Forever
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: On a trip to the city, BJ glimpses a familiar face.


AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is all~~ Raven's fault. No really, it is. ^_~;; Her fic, Missing Hawk (which may be found here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mash-slash/message/1333), inspired this little slice of utter weirdness. 

Oh, Douglas' comment:

BJ never lost anything. BJ keeps it all. Like Sarah B said, I'm sure Peg

knows, I'm sure Peg stays.

But when was life fair?

Also helped to inspire this. I must give credit where credit is due. Title comes from the Tom Petty song, "Walls". Feedback would cause me to dance about like a maniac. ^_^

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

Meredith

This fic was brought to you by too little sleep and the fact I'm out of Snickers. Poofy.

===========================

You Can't Hold On Forever 1/1

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

http://www.demando.net/

===========================

It only happened by chance.

_(you can take that any way you want to)_

Sometimes, when the colors were too fresh, too bright and plastic-- when the world was a maze of sunshine and as two-dimensional as the smiling faces in the ads-- well, on those days, BJ would take Erin into the city, and wander as aimlessly as prophet in a fever dream. He'd feel her small hand in his own, as if her small fingers were wrapped right around his heart-- and let her lead him along the sidewalks. Just for a little while, indulging the things she wanted to see and do; Golden Gate park, lunch in a little cafe, tea cookies and treats that all looked too pretty to be eaten. It was slow and steady, but eventually he'd fade into her world, where belief in good was not so much a denial of the bad as it was simply the way things *were*. No magazine-face smiles, just Erin's real joy, her fascination with anything and everything.

__

(This is America, this is the city by the bay-- with hot dogs and movies and bright colored cars. This is everything you wanted when you used to lay awake at night listening to the sprawling monster of Korea breathing, lying in wait for new blood. Isn't this what you wanted? Bright clean colors, the well-meaning, fatherly faces on the television, saying through static that it's all for your own good. Why won't you be happy now, why won't you sink down into this plastic little dream?)

Today was one of those days-- McCarthy's hazy, wire outline had been on the television this morning; bloodlight and red memories had been in BJ's dreams, and when he woke to feel Peg beside him, run his hands through her hair, he swore he couldn't touch her. Watching Erin make a mess of her milk and cereal, he'd offered Peg the day off-- he'd smiled when Erin flew down the hall, eager to buckle her little black shoes so they could leave. And then, in the doorway with her hat askew and her yellow coat only buttoned up so far, Erin had held out her hand, saying 'Come on, Papa', and something in her eyes said that, yes, maybe she knew the way. 

Erin was a strangely quiet child, blue-eyed and somehow regal in her own clumsiness. Peg often joked how lucky it was that Erin had a doctor for a father _(or is that a father for a doctor? is it?)--_ there were endless cuts and bruises as their little girl tried to scale the garden wall, or the tree outside, or when she decided someone had to stop Ethan Lordy from throwing sand at girls. 

__

(It's in Peg's eyes. She watches Erin through the kitchen window like a princess with a spyglass in a tall, endless tower. Like she's trapped, but some careful sliver of her heart is one there, rolling in the leaves and digging up worms, living through Erin, giving her a chance to stretch her arms. 

So he didn't feel bad when he bought Erin a glove and went out to play catch with her in the cool evenings.)

'Tomboy' was the new word, the one Erin's kindergarten teacher murmured with vague disapproval; but to BJ there was nothing better than hauling Erin up in his arms in the evening, smelling autumn and the high moon and mud in her hair. 

Sometimes a whiff of blood.

But that was only his imagination. 

He tried to make more sense of it than this, but everything was jumbled. Snapshots, quick and changing, just moments with no order. He'd given up trying to put them into sequence, trying to find the rhythm of his other life-- the one that seemed so far away, the one before...

Korea.

And that is what he struggled to remember. Each night in his study with the doors safely closed, he took out Korea and lay it before him. Like a slimy creature that had burrowed under his skin, making a home in his stomach. A tapeworm-- in his dreams, he watched himself die, mouth open; watched the long white sickness of Korea crawl out between the lips of his corpse. It would languish there and die, on the kitchen floor, perhaps, with no one left to feed on. 

__

(You're sick, you know that?)

Korea. Ko-re-a. Yes, sir-ee-ah. He etched and re-etched the lines of that time in his mind, tried to hold onto things he'd never believed would become precious.

ITEM: The taste of gin in your mouth. And in His mouth; tongues dipping in. Hands cupping worn faces, and yes beneath that gin he tastes just like the ocean-- Atlantic, not Pacific, sharp and real. Finest kind. 

ITEM: Bones-- the weariness in your bones, and broken bones you must set. Bone-tired, in the Swamp, leaning against each other and what is that nameless thing he gave you that you took for granted and crave so now?

ITEM:...

It required organization and complete concentration, the resurrection of those in-between-times, the things that never should have happened. The blood, the mess and the shellfire, the terror he had no trouble remembering, they were in his blood and dreams. It was the relief he held so close to himself, a person with eyes like broken pieces of blue. Always something to say, a joke, a wisecrack. He could just imagine Hawkeye in the living room, watching the television and McCarthy's angry movements. 

"When God gave out paranoia," Hawkeye would say, leaning back and shaking his head, "this guy got enough for every man in China. Look at his face-- he looks like he's receiving transmissions direct from the mother-ship. You thought Frank Burns was bad? This guy makes Frank Burns look like the tooth fairy. Hide your lost teeth, Erin-- we don't want the Major skulking around here."

Irreverent. Unapologetic. 

Sometimes, there was more than just a mere comment from the Hawkeye in his mind; there would be banter, back and forth, or just a look he could imagine. That Look, fond or smoldering. Arms tight around him, and Goodbye etched in stone. 

_(But here's the problem, the real problem, you see. 'Cause if you're going to remember how it felt to joke with him and eat with him and kiss him and make love to him right down to those little noises he'd make-- well, then you also have to remember that one phone call. You tried to be truthful, but how could you when the truth, the truth for the two of you, can't even exist with the wife and the child and the white picket fence?_

You can't have everything, you know.)

He felt like a refugee, walking down the sidewalk with Erin, his eyes trying to pick out faces in the crowd, to make them real. There was a little relief in walking, in moving away from something even if he couldn't really escape.

"Hey!" cried Erin, her hand slipping out of her father's with disturbing ease. Scrambling, she moved towards the side of the McAlpin's they were walking past and kicked the crumbled phantom of a newspaper. Down on her gloved-hands and knees in her good white tights, Erin pounced on something BJ couldn't see, though he followed her closely, protectively. He sensed adults, men and women, looking on his little girl with some type of disgust-- a fear of something they didn't have a word for. But Erin's face was bright and her smile wide-rimmed with pink as she held up her quarry.

"Look, Papa," she said, studying the small, sun baked brown toad she held carefully in her two small hands, "I saw him hop out of the gutter."

"I see him, Erin," he laughed, unconsciously rubbing his upper lip-- there was nothing to block his expression, no cheesy mustache, because his smiles no longer needed to be hidden. The toad made a deep noise of half-serious protest, but Erin continued to hold him easily as she trotted along side her father. 

"He's so bumpy," Erin considered, wrinkling her nose. A strange child, but still a child. "Pet him," and she held the creature up so that BJ could comply with her request. Her gaze was almost understanding, "Touching things makes them there, right?" 

"Yes, honey," what a treasure, this little spark, and he could love Peg just for bringing her into this world. "He definitely is bumpy," BJ reached past the toad to ruffle his daughter's lackluster brown curls. Inside himself, there was just a small bubble of real happiness, like the frog that hides the golden ball in his fathomless chin pouch. 

"You shouldn't be out here," Erin lectured the amphibian, "You'll get run over, and then you'll be an even more bumpy toad pancake." 

In the little shop on the corner, BJ ordered a cup of coffee and a strawberry milk-shake, holding the long straw out so Erin could sip without letting go of the toad. While he stored his own hot brew away, she sat on a stool and fed her new friend the dead flies that had collected on the window sill. BJ simply closed his eyes and listened to the noises of the crowd, trying to remind himself he was alive. 

__

("Alive, dead," you remember Hawkeye saying. "Sometimes I can't tell-- sometimes I think I'm dead. If I am, you've got some serious necrophilia problems, Beej."

You touch him with fingers that want to go deep and soothe, though your voice is light as you say, "I bribed the mortician." And if only the dead can have this, then you don't want to be alive ever again. 

Flies on the window sill, lined up; men on the battle field, covered in white sheets, like larva.)

Erin's high giggle reach out to rescue BJ from that image-- he looked over to see her hands dripping and her gloves soaked around the toad. 

"He peed on me," the little girl informed her father, vastly amused. Finally, she set the toad down in a cluster of bushes near the pay-phones outside. BJ ushered her back under the soft yellow lights towards the ladies' restroom while he waited in the narrow hallway.

__

(And, of course, there are other phone calls. 

Margaret's voice is full of life and she's surprised-- but pleased-- to hear from you. She's only got a minute until her next shift, she says that she's going back to school in the evening. She's going to be a doctor and-- oh, Hawkeye? No, she hasn't heard from him. 

Colonel Potter is enjoying retirement and falling in love with the Misses all over again, but Hawkeye? No, not a word; it's a damn shame he doesn't keep it touch. He was a good boy. And you hang up the phone, hurriedly, after that inadvertent past tense. 

Daniel Pierce says he doesn't want to talk to you, and eventually just lets the phone keep ringing. 

You don't call Radar, 'cause you don't really want to know-- You call Klinger (speaking briefly with the soft lilt of Soon-Li on the other end), you call Charles, you talk to Father Mulcahy through one of the nuns, you call and you call and... 

And then you even call Trapper, but when you hear the smooth, lazy male voice on the other end, you slam the receiver down hard and have no way of explaining this to your wife. )

Pushing the door open using all of her weight, Erin came to take BJ's hand in her own still-soapy one. 

"What happened to your gloves?" he asked, wiping her hands on the edge of his jacket. 

"They were dirty," Erin replied with easy practicality, "I threw them away." At her father's look, she smiled and scuffed her foot on the tile floor.

"Your Mother," said BJ, navigating through the crowd, "is going to kill me." 

_(Who the hell wants to remember Korea anyway? You should be here, in San Francisco, fully with your wife and daughter, not weaving their words and actions between the din of your thoughts. You don't know why you hold him so tightly, if he was a ghost [if? if?] you'd be holding him to this world, but you have to keep him alive in your mind.)_

Back out under the chilly, opal winter sky, BJ slipped from being led to leading; it was about time to they went home. Already Erin's grip was loose and her eyes a little milky-- he could see that she was just dreaming with her eyes open. She'd lay down for a nap under the bright balloons Peg painted in her bedroom, and BJ would sit in his study, listening to the house breathe. As they came to the crosswalk, BJ pulled on Erin a little, always a little nervous and aware. They stood watching the blare of orange-red 'don't walk' and the faint shadows of people within the passing cars.

It only happened by chance. It could only happen by chance. 

__

(You thought you were going to wander around in that maze forever, but no-- here is the point, the sharpest, clearest image. It just often takes some getting around to. You may have forego kissing the gravy off his lips, you may have to wait in the Swamp while you know his hands are on some nurse. You just have to be patient. You'll get around to it eventually.)

BJ would never be sure what made him look; perhaps, even after all this time, he was sensitized, waiting to see that form out of the corner of his eye. He turned, saw a man with granite-and-ebony hair, walking with that loose, easy gate. Hands in his pockets, walking with his gaze on the ground, a foreigner and somehow beaten, but still with a magnetism that made strangers turn, eyes wanting a glimpse. Look and see...

As if he, too, had some other sense, the man stopped walking, looked up. There was a fear and a longing in the pieces of his blue eyes; it was not just a man who looked like Hawkeye Pierce in the right light or from the right angle. It *was* Hawkeye (famous in song and story), finest kind, the only kind. With the steady stream of traffic and people between them, the two doctors, two captains, two friends, simply looked at one another. For the first time, BJ discovered that he couldn't *see* what was going on behind (my, my) Hawk's eyes. 

_(You should be relieved. He's alive (is he?) wandering, yes, but alive and damn it you can't have everything why can't you be grateful why do you always have to want more?)_

Then, very briefly, Hawkeye simply smiled in a way BJ had never seen him smile before-- lost, kind of sad and only vaguely remembering. In the dark, in each other's arms, they never *said* it, and just like now they didn't need to. Turning swiftly, Hawkeye began to walk away. 

The light flashed white-- "WALK", it seemed to command, but BJ went one better and scooped Erin up in his arms hurrying across the street with uneven strides. Erin's gasp of surprise bounced up and down with her in his arms; he pushed through the crowd, eyes alert and gaze wild. 

"Hawkeye--!" he began, and turned the corner.

__

(You had to know the end of this story, even before the story began. Maybe this is what you came for all along.)

Nothing, just faceless masses-- shadows, extras, strangers, no-people. And, just like Korea, BJ would now have to make himself believe that he *had* seen Hawkeye wandering the streets of San Francisco; holding that and a thousand other little touches and glances and telling himself everyday that they were real. He had nothing tangible to hold on to.

Defeated, BJ set Erin back down on her feet, wondering why there was no fear in her eyes, for surely her father had frightened her, acting out of character so. All he saw in her not-quite-green gaze was her child's wisdom, that glorious young insanity that says that because the sky is written about and is real, then dragons (which are written about) must be real too. She could believe the world into being. Looking briefly over her shoulder, BJ's daughter motioned for him to kneel beside her. She touched his cheek, and his eyes which (damn you) weren't crying. 

Very softly, she said, "I'm sorry, Papa." Slowly, BJ nodded, standing and running his gaze over his surroundings, looking. Nothing to be seen. 

Gently, Erin took BJ's hand and led him away. 

_(Korea was real, you saw the blood, you heard the shellfire. So if Korea was real, then Hawkeye was real. If Hawkeye is real, then his hands on you must be real, and his feeling for you must be real. It won't go away. Because if something-- like Korea-- exists, it can't just disappear.)_

==============================================

[to the tune of 'Oklahoma']

"Oooooooh feedback,

makes this slasher jump and jump for joy.

It's such a treat,

It can't be beat,

It makes me write stupid songs as a ploy!

Oooooooh feedback,

Is my one earthly desire.

At least the only one,

I'll admit in this pun,

So please give feedback to this little spit-fire!"


End file.
